Vodafone's Arun Sarin steps down as CEO

Arun Sarin steps down as Vodafone CEO next week after five years at the head of the company.

His last action as Vodafone boss was to reveal the Q2 results, which included a cautious outlook for the year ahead and showed that the company had lost 27,000 UK customers over the last three months, led by a huge drop on prepay.

India-born Sarin, 53, joined Vodafone’s board in 1999 and became chief executive in July 2003.

Sarin’s reign at Vodafone will be characterised by managing to pacify a disruptive board two years ago, which came close to pushing him out, and more positively, a strategy to establish Vodafone in emerging markets such as South Africa, eastern Europe, Egypt, Turkey and India.

His former deputy Vittorio Colao is replacing Sarin. Colao first joined Vodafone when the UK operator bought Omnitel in Italy, where Colao was chief executive.